


Forget Me Not

by Dogsled



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-21
Updated: 2007-08-21
Packaged: 2018-09-30 11:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10161908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dogsled/pseuds/Dogsled
Summary: "Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it." Set straight after DH, the REAL ending, not the Epilogue of Doom:  Harry struggles to come to terms with the wreckage of the real world, and attempts to comprehend the things that he has lost. If all this wasn't enough, there seems to be something terribly wrong with his magic. Pairings: Slash, hints of het. AN: The Character Death warning is only in place because this story is canon compliant, and people are dead.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Note from SeparatriX, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [HP Fandom](http://fanlore.org/wiki/HP_Fandom_\(archive\)), which was closed for health and financial reasons. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in August 2016. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [HP Fandom collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hpfandom/profile).

The world did not revolve around Harry Potter. There was nothing in the bright and hot June sunshine - that made the thick velvet bedding insufferable - that could have suggested that the previous day had been host to a wizarding battle of such proportions as had not been witnessed for a great many centuries. It should have been a dreary, unpleasant sort of day, Harry surmised, in absent and sleepy bliss. He was not sure how long he had been asleep, but the warmth and comfortable familiarity of his bed in Gryffindor Tower had lulled him into willing unconsciousness, and he woke feeling well rested after deep, wonderful, dreamless slumber.

Without warning the memories crashed back into place, a hundred of them at once, most of them of lost loved ones, or events, of feelings. Alone in the dormitory, there was nobody to watch Harry fall out of bed, the blankets wound tightly around his limbs forcing him to crumple to the floor like a badly risen soufflé, his hands pinned tightly to his temple, as though he could prevent the barrage that so weakened him.

Voldemort was dead and gone. He’d died. He’d seen his parents. Remus was dead. Fred…poor, poor Fred. All those children. Hogwarts nearly destroyed. The lines of the dead laid out in the Great Hall. 

Harry tipped forwards, drawing his hands away just in time to catch himself before he hit the floor. 

Centaurs and house elves lying in state beside their wizard counterparts. Molly crying. Headmasters clapping. Snape’s memories. 

He hadn’t eaten properly in days, it felt, but he managed to jettison a considerable amount none the less, thanks mostly to the impromptu feast in the Great Hall that morning. Unable to summon the strength to even support his aching body, his head tipped forwards, stopping at the reach of his back an inch from the mess that he’d made, his hair soaked, and the smell unbearable. Harry could not focus on the moment; the memories were simply too overwhelming; now coming faster than before as his head began to clear. 

Lying as though dead, only able to listen to the mocking laughter around him. Hagrid’s tortured sobs, thinking that he was dead. Voldemort’s face as he exploded in red and green. Neville on fire. 

Harry’s tortured spine would not support him any more. He fell sidewards, rolled onto his back like a turtle and gasped in a huge breath of putrid air, his eyes open and wide, but unseeing past the powerful memories that usurped his mind. 

Nagini rose up high inside her cage. Snape’s paralysed shock as she struck her killing blow. Kreacher rallying the house elves to fight. Ravenclaw Tower tumbling down as a giant fell against the battered foundations. Green. Red. Green. Yellow. Red. Green. Bodies everywhere…bodies of friends and enemies. 

He closed his eyes and they came faster than ever, too blurred to make sense of. It was all too much to deal with at once, but Harry had no choice. It had been waiting for his waking to explode upon his mind. The morning after the Third Task felt like a walk in the park. The morning after Sirius’ death and Voldemort’s return was nothing in comparison. Even Dumbledore’s death didn’t stab with quite the ferocity that this did. There had been no whirligig of frenzied memory to overwhelm him, just that single pang of loss and the series of events as they had happened. Harry could not for anything begin to string together the memories he had of yesterday. He could not begin to fathom who had died, when, or how, or who had killed them. It was all too much, and he knew that when he recovered he would have to face it all, and his stomach lurched violently again, in a citric shade of green.

The sun, which had taken on a mature glow, had moved around to the west window by the time Harry was finally still. The memories had not gone; they were all there, sitting inside of his mind like Dudley’s books in the smallest bedroom, ready to be looked at if only he reached for them. The tears on Harry’s face were long since dried, and even the acidic smell was beginning to fade as familiarity took over. 

When Harry was sure he opened his eyes; let the light blaze against his retinas until he felt it was long enough and then slowly sat up, his back straight and his shoulders stiff. His head swam instantly, vision tunneling, tipping irresistibly forwards until with a jerk Harry pulled himself back up, just in time. His left arm began to fill with pins and needles as the blood rushed back into it, all the way down to his fingers, which he watched absently as he opened and closed them, making an effort to keep the rest of his body, but specifically his head, as still as possible.

He felt like Voldemort’s curse really had killed him. There had been no morning in his life that he had woken up feeling so utterly wretched, weak and powerless. He felt as though somebody had taken a spoon and scooped out whole parts of his being as he slept; leaving something behind that barely resembled the Harry Potter of before. 

As the minutes crept on, it began to occur to Harry’s tortured mind that he had been left asleep for an awfully long time. It was certainly dinnertime now, and yet nobody had come to awaken him. Had something happened that had made that impossible? Was he really dead after all? There was a brief moment in which Harry regarded his limbs through squinted eyes, trying to identify any kind of glow that there might be to him. He pinched himself on the thigh with his still tingling left hand and this confirmed his continued existence. Or did it? If he was a ghost, would he be able to pinch himself? Would he see himself as solid? He had never thought to ask – it would have seemed rude.

Still pondering this question in a distinct effort to keep his mind on anything but his memories, Harry began the ponderous task of actually getting to his feet; made a trifle more difficult by the still tightly wound bedclothes that pinned his legs tightly to each other. Every extra movement aggravated him, but finally he struggled free, put one leg underneath him as a lever and wobbled up to his full height.

The sickening sensation in his head was less this time, and easily ignored. Harry stood swaying in the fallen blankets, looking out of the window down at the unrecognizable grounds below. 

A great swathe of the forest had been destroyed by giants; their paths tore through the ancient trees, which were thrown apart like long grass. From here Harry could see the descending sun, which before would have been impossible due to Ravenclaw Tower standing in the way. It had clearly nearly taken the Owlery with it when it fell, for the smaller tower had a great hole ripped in the side of it. Harry knew that Ravenclaw Tower had fallen into the courtyard below along with the rest of the North Wing; remembered when the wall had exploded and that when the air had cleared Fred was lying dead. The whole of that side of the building was shattered and destroyed. The Giants had clearly been digging further into it for prey, as though seeking termites in a mound. Harry could not forget the sight of the sea of black spiders climbing up towards them from below. Their corpses, amongst others, would be in the courtyard, and Harry knew that when he went down, he would find it almost impassable. 

The rest of the grounds were not left out of the damage. With a pang Harry recognized the beech tree under which his father and his friends had studied, fallen on one side by the lake, knocked over by the death throes of the giant that had clearly drowned beside it, still face down in the lake. The Whomping Willow – strategically right in the way between the forest and the castle – had clearly suffered during the night. Harry remembered his breakneck flight with Ron and Hermione towards the tree in the dark grounds – it must have been at around two in the morning – terrified for their lives. Now the tree was little more than a stump with a few shattered branches loosely connected, which occasionally twitched, as though in terrible pain. Around it lay the tattered remains of once handsome summer foliage, drying in the sunshine.

And there were people below, walking dazed amongst the destruction. Harry stepped towards the window, and now he could see the courtyard where Ravenclaw Tower had fallen. A number of people and a hippogriff with a broken wing were picking amongst the remains, and Harry knew with deep pain just what they were doing.

Tired of looking he pulled back from the window. He must go down and help, no matter how wretched he felt. He was determined to be a part of this, furious that they had not thought to wake him to do so. These people – for he could not think them as bodies – should not have lay broken beneath the rubble, unremembered, while he lay sleeping in the sunshine. It made him so angry with himself. How could he have been so callous?

The Gryffindor Common Room was empty, but strewn about with objects that had been shaken out of place; the grating in front of the fire had fallen over, and several tapestries had fallen to reveal just how sunfaded they and the stones around them were. Harry found the tallest tower’s resilience to the bombardment quite stunning, and also a little frightening. He tiptoed across the deeply carpeted crimson floor, trying not to succumb to the sudden and intense fear that it was about to collapse around his ears and send him tumbling down, down towards the foundations far below. He felt that it would have been infinitely pointless to have survived the war, and then died in such ridiculous circumstances.

Outside in the hallway, it appeared that the Fat Lady had come to much the same conclusion as he had, or had simply been too drunk from the morning’s celebrations to find her way back to her own frame. Just in case, he left the portrait hanging ajar and stepped away just as carefully, not sure about the safety of the seventh floor, or any floor for that matter, after the barrage of the previous night. 

It was clear that every level had suffered to some degree, but that the seventh floor, as the last line of retreat, has been the least hit of those. None the less, as Harry descended the familiar corridor past fallen and empty portraits, and the lonely and shattered remains of a suit or armor, he could not help but feel a sense of foreboding brushing against him with the fresh draft. 

At the end of the corridor Harry turned right. The doorway to the nearest classroom was hanging off its hinges, and Harry’s eyes were drawn instantly towards the room as he passed. Half of the floor and further wall of the classroom was missing, and Harry could not see the wall that was beyond that one either. He feared the worst had happened during the night; unsteady bits of masonry giving way, unsupported, falling to the floors below, and he knew what he would see when he rounded the corner.

What Harry had suspected - almost feared - was true. He remembered looking up with awe into the great stairwell, then climbing the stairs towards the Gryffindor Common Room for the first time, even though it took much longer, and he had found faster ways to get back since then. Would students at Hogwarts ever see that again? It was doubtful, as far as Harry was concerned, considering the fact that the north wall of the stairway had been ripped clean away when the rest of the wall had collapsed, sending stairs and portraits to their doom below. Harry felt a pang of empathy for the paintings; they had not had any choice in their destruction either. They had been hung where they were hung, and could not have run away even if they wanted to. At least they stood a good chance of being salvaged and repaired, unlike those who had died in battle. Nobody could repair you once you were dead.

This uppermost section of the stairway must have fallen during the day, after Harry had gone to bed; for he, exhausted, had not witnessed anything strange. Now he did not have such an easy time, for the landing onto which he stepped stood alone over an enormous drop to the rubble far below, and he edged from one doorway into another empty and thankfully intact classroom. This shortcut he had used a hundred times before, but on this occasion Harry was particularly nervous as he crossed the empty space. Desks had been thrown about and not a single one of the stained glass windows had survived the night; Harry was sure that this rang true for the entirety of the building, for he remembered the whole castle quaking beneath his feet.

Out of the classroom Harry escaped into the structurally sound south facing corridor, making his way down the passage towards the Room of Requirement, pausing at the corner to look at the space of wall in which the door might appear. He hesitated considering trying it out, but those precious seconds would be too many. He was sure that he must be needed elsewhere.

Therefore, with a heavy heart, Harry turned right and set off down the hallway, head down the stairway to the floor below and saw firsthand that the floor below had been more grievously damaged than that from whence he had come. Blast marks had scorched the walls and ripped holes into classrooms. Clearly a pair of fighters had been battling for their lives here. Harry peered silently down the empty, battered and bloodstained corridor, and then turned back to the stairs and descended further, knowing that it would only get worse.

Harry didn’t dare look around on the fifth floor; the battle had really started down here, where the entrance to Ravenclaw Tower had once been. His mind instinctively guessed at the damage that had been caused. Memorable places such as the Prefect’s bathroom at the end of the corridor had no doubt not escaped the carnage. The mermaid certainly would be gone, destroyed with all the other fragile works of art that had once decorated the ancient school.

As he went on to the fourth floor a great rattling and shaking occurred, and from above came a resounding crash that thundered down towards him. Harry threw himself against the western wall at the bottom of the stairway, curled up against the stone in a tight ball and felt rather than listened to the raucous percussion as it descended further below. Screams echoed from the courtyard again as with a great and violent crash something exploded at ground level. The screaming continued even after the crashing stopped. 

Harry thought he knew what had happened, and he whirled back into action, throwing himself down the stairs again, taking a sharp left at the bottom to get to the next set of descent and racing down those too. At the bottom of these Harry had to pull to a sudden stop to prevent throwing himself from the second story. Ravenclaw Tower had once stood just here. Once, Ravenclaw students had slept in the midair in front of him. But now the tower was gone, leaving nothing in front of him but a gaping space, and an incredible - if lethal - view.

Carefully, Harry approached the edge, looking down into the courtyard below, unable to see much through the cloud of rising dust. Although nothing was visible, he could still hear the shouts and screams of the people below. Looking up and west, Harry confirmed his suspicions. From here, the Owlery might have once obscured the fading sunlight, but now the tower was gone. It had clearly given way to gravity and joined its counterpart in the courtyard below. Harry hoped desperately that nobody had been in the way, but it was a lot to ask; the search party that he had seen from Gryffindor Tower would have been right in the path of the tumbling structure.

Forcing himself to ignore the tumultuous scene, Harry turned and head down the next stairway. His breathing was heavy enough that he noticed it over the thunderous hoofbeat of his own heart. At the bottom of the stone stairs, Harry had to traverse a long corridor towards the other side of the castle. Every step he took in the wrong direction felt terrible, but just around the corner waited the next set of stairs that allowed him down, finally, through a great cloud of dust and onto the ground floor.

Harry blundered blindly off the second to bottom step and hit the opposite wall, with both hands up to catch him. The dust was biting into his eyes viciously and filling his lungs like smoke, making him cough; which of course didn’t make it better at all. It would have been impossible to see through, even if he could keep his head up and his eyes open. Uselessly Harry waved his hands in front of him, but it didn’t seem to do any good. Thankfully instinct still seemed to be within him, although slightly more sluggish than usual. He drew his wand and though ‘Protego’, and was surprised when it did not immediately work. What was wrong with his magic? It had seemed okay yesterday, when he’d been face to face with Voldemort… ‘Protego,’ he tried, again, and this time a feeble bubble exploded around him, giving him air to breathe, and a chance to rub the dirt from his irritated eyes. He descended down the corridor slowly, and carefully picked his way around the remains of Ravenclaw Tower in the sunlight.

The first person to see Harry was a grubby faced Dean, clearly exhausted. “Watch out, Harry – bits have been falling off the north wall all day, and I don’t know if you noticed, but the West Tower just came down…”

“I noticed,” Harry answered, frowning. “What can I do to help?”

“Well, nobody was under the tower…we had an early warning from the wards…but can you send a Patronus to Hagrid to lend us a couple of thestrals? They’re the best thing for clearing the air, but I never learnt how to do that talking thing with a Patronus…”

Harry shook his head. “I would, but I haven’t ever done it either.” He suspected he might be able to guess how, but the truth was that he didn’t want to admit that something was wrong with his magic. The thought was terrifying even to him, but the idea of other people knowing about it repelled him somehow. It was like admitting a weakness, and Harry had good reason to suspect that he would need all the strength he could muster in the next few days. “I’ll try and find someone who can though,” he added, quickly, and set off into the dust again in earnest, leaving Dean to his restacking of rocks.

Luckily the next person he came across was Hermione, who, she said, was on her way up to find him. Some intelligent person had finally decided to look at the foundations of Gryffindor Tower, which were smartly presented towards the forest, and had been an excellent target the previous night. Not to anyone’s surprise, they had found the Tower grossly undermined. It wasn’t safe, but, Hermione said, quickly, it’d be the first thing they reinforced when they were sure to have got everybody out of the rubble. Harry did not fail to notice that Hermione refused to say ‘bodies’ either, although her eyes had filled up with still unshed tears at the word ‘everybody’.

When Harry mentioned the thestrals, Hermione smiled at him wanly through her obvious pain, and explained that she had already sent word to Hagrid. As though summoned by the very thought of them, several of the gruesome creatures landed in the center of the shattered courtyard and began to flap their great leathery wings, filling the courtyard with hollow, eerie music. It was very familiar now to Harry, who shuddered and stepped away from the inviting whispering. He’d made his choice already; this was what he had chosen, and he intended to stay here; whatever the consequences and whatever the responsibilities.

With an effort Harry turned his attention back to Hermione, who was speaking as though she hadn’t noticed his reaction, but had the air of someone who had abruptly looked away and changed the subject. “…says you’re an arse, as usual, and McGonagall wants to see you. She’s out in the grounds, where we’ve set up a temporary base until the castle’s safe again.”

Harry’s progress away from the shell of a castle was impeded, however. Upon reaching what had once been arched exits, Harry found only the shattered remains of the battlements, and had to clamber around lumps of masonry that were taller than him, finally wriggling out into the sunshine beyond. 

It was clear that he’d been wrong about the West Tower. Most of it had fallen outside of the courtyard, tumbling down the grass wall that descended into the wide and open grounds. The Owlery itself had hit the ground like a wheel, rolled apart from the rest of the tower and come to rest some distance away from the castle. The damage to the school made far more impact in the daylight, and from far enough away. 

As Harry looked up at the destruction, he failed to truly notice the arrival of a number of people around him, all of whom seemed to have arrived from the direction of the camp over against the north wall. Startled, Harry span, already horrified to find himself surrounded. There were people shaking his hand, the flashing and acrid smoke of cameras, questions and compliments, and Harry span again, and the world span with him. His head hit the ground with a painful thunk, and then everything went blissfully black.


End file.
